Our Spring Offensive, which ended on October 31, took the total raised for the Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund this year to more than $200,000, and $8003 came in the last week.
A big thank you to all who sent messages of support, made donations and/or came along to some of the many fundraising events organised by our supporters over the past two months.
Your effort has taken us to within $50,000 of this year's target. I am confident we will make that target because of the tremendous spirit of our supporters, as was movingly expressed in a letter received this week from Jim Knight, a longstanding subscriber:
"Herewith a donation towards your vital publication. When GLW turns up, usually on Thursday, I scan read it, then read it from cover to cover and digest it, mentally applaud it or think of the implications.
"I'm an age pensioner (86 years old) and have been an active socialist and trade unionist since my service in World War II, and now I am trying to get people to curtail global climate change.
"I remember going, at age six or seven, with my father (a WWI "Old Contemptible" and socialist) to street corner meetings about the economic crisis which we've come to know as the Great Depression. I can recall reading articles in the press in 1935 saying the Depression was over. As we know now, it continued until the effects of WWII caused so much destruction as to create a demand for labour.
"The capitalist solution is to start a war ... to inculcate fear and apprehension and to turn manufacturing industry to building planes, submarines, bombs, rockets, bullets, guns, etc — things which destroy and get destroyed so more are needed.
"The trouble is that the ordinary citizens are the ones that pay for all of this, hence their need to induce apprehension and fear to reduce their opposition.
"We have to abolish this ghastly capitalist system."
The Jim Knights of the world, who are still in the good fight at 86, set a fine example for younger generations in the movement for real social change.
His story about the Great Depression and the terrible world war that followed it should provoke us to think about the times in which we live. Think of the unbridled greed gripping the corporate boardrooms today. Think, Jim wrote, about the fact that "Australia has the biggest credit card debt per capita of any country, the US included." Ponder, he added, "the inherent racism revealed in Howard, Rudd and Co's treatment of refugees".
"There has to be a better way", he concluded.
Jim has put in the first $200 of the $50k that we still have to raise over the next two months. What can you do to match his fighting spirit?
Please make a donation today to our fighting fund at: Greenleft, Commonwealth Bank, BSB 062-006, Account No. 00901992. Otherwise, you can donate via our website, post a cheque or money order to PO Box 515, Broadway NSW 2007 or phone in a donation on the toll-free line at 1800 634 206 (within Australia).